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Thursday, July 15, 2010

I always was a sucker for redheads. Especially grim-faced, sword-wielding, demon-slaying redheads. Heck, I married one.

So, I am one of the growing number of hapless souls to have become ensorcelled by a little game called Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing (aka LotFP). I am sure you know all about it by now, if you are anywhere in the gaming blogosphere. If not, I won't go into the whole history of the game's development, just go here and see for yourself.

Suffice to say I felt compelled to order a copy of this game. Until recently, I hadn't purchased any gaming books in quite a long time. But about a month ago I picked up Troll Lord Games' Castles & Crusades Player's Handbook, and not long after that I got C&C's Monsters & Treasure. I've said elsewhere in this blog that I settled on C&C because, after having delved into retro-clones like Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, and others, I felt that I had to do too much house ruling of those games to get to the rule set I wanted. Upon studying C&C, I discovered that I liked its rule set (i.e. therefore I will only need to do minimal house ruling) and tentatively decided to make it my game of choice for any campaigns I may want to run in the near future. I could now use my precious free time to prepare a campaign rather than struggle to create house rules.

Then I came across LotFP. The game is the brainchild of one James Raggi, a somewhat irrascible Finnish fellow that has become, some might say, quite notorious. He's unapologetically outspoken about his opinions on what the old school renaissance (OSR) is and is not. He's been the source of not a little bit of controversy, especially in recent weeks. Go here for just one example.

Mr. Raggi is brash, indeed. But that's part of his appeal. His gung-ho style can be infectious. And while I don't claim to agree with all of his opinions (for instance, I could care less about a clearly defined OSR), there's much to be said for such a strong-willed, determined gamer who says he wants to develop his own contribution to the OSR and then actually follows through with it.

Ultimately, he won me over. I have to say, he's thrown a monkey wrench into my gears with his game! I was just fine with my Castles & Crusades until you came along, Mr. Raggi! Now you've gone and made me all uncertain about what set of rules I'll be using for my games!

James has, in all seriousness, created what I believe is a solid product. I look forward to getting my copy. Once I do, I'll post a review.

With that, I'll stop my ramblings for another day and get the heck to bed...